TIME AND THE CONWAYSLyttelton Theatre, London SE1Opened 5 May, 2009
***

The National Theatre’s last production
of a J.B. Priestley play, Stephen Daldry’s radical reinvention of An Inspector Calls, is still on
tour nearly 17 years after it opened. It may in part be this landmark
status which led the NT to bring in Rupert Goold, whose recent
productions of Shakespeare and Pirandello have been beyond radical and
some way out the other side. Oddly, this time play of Priestley’s gives
Goold little to get a firm grip on.

In Act One, we see a 21st birthday party for one of the daughters of a
commercial-gentry family in 1919: the war to end all wars is over,
everyone is looking forward to an era of prosperity, enjoyment and in
the case of sister Madge socialist advances. Act Two flashes forward to
1938, a meeting at which the family face both bankruptcy and the
comprehensive failure of each individual’s dreams; Act Three returns to
1919 for a relentless jackhammer of dramatic irony as each takes the
first step on their path to unfulfilment, while Kay tries in vain to
recall her half-memories of her timeslip vision of the future. It
sounds fecund for re-envisioning, but in practice all Goold can do is
insert a little trompe l’oeil
jiggery-pokery with Laura Hopkins’ set at the end of each act, with
some visually arresting but imprecise (in both meaning and movement)
dance sequences accompanying the latter two. His previous successes
have been rooted in specific interpretations of plays both overall and
at given moments; Priestley's sense of time as co-existent as well as
linear, though, affords staging opportunities only for vague
impressionism.

Even the acting occasionally goes awry. The opening moments, as the
Conway daughters prepare for a game of charades, sound uncomfortably
shrill; in Act Two, Francesca Annis as Mrs Conway ages her voice so
that it sounds as if she is playing a retired colonel; and Paul Ready’s
portrayal of older, greyer brother Alan, although wonderful, is
strangely reminiscent in mannerism of Jimmy Stewart. But Hattie Morahan
and Fenella Woolgar turn in excellent performances as Kay, the would-be
novelist who subsides into hack journalism, and socialist
firebrand-turned-selfish schoolmarm Madge; Faye Castelow is appealing
as the youngest and most vivacious sister Carol; and the second act is
harrowing in its portrayal of how much a group of human beings can lose
of themselves.